Panssari Salama
Respected Leader
The Leopard plan: How European tanks can help Ukraine take back its territory
Ukraine needs to move to a new phase of the war if it is to reclaim its territory occupied by Russia. A European plan to supply Leopard tanks should be at the heart of this effort.
ecfr.eu
Nosto:
The Leopard plan
In March, Kyiv requested 88 Leopard 1 tanks and 100 Marder-type IFVs from German industry. The chancellery should finally grant approval, as it did for self-propelled howitzers and anti-aircraft tanks. But, like the old Soviet vehicles transferred by eastern Europeans to Ukraine, many replacement parts are no longer being mass produced. Accordingly, the core of Berlin’s new effort should be to create a consortium of European Leopard 2 users. This would form and equip a Ukrainian armoured brigade of around 90 such vehicles and ensure the availability to Ukraine of a modern NATO-standard battle tank with scalable production capacity.The Leopard 2 tank, first introduced in 1979 and upgraded in several rounds ever since, is in use in 13 European armies: Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey. Together they have more than 2,000 vehicles across different variants and levels of readiness. The more that countries donate tanks, the easier it will be to share the burden of giving them away. The same applies to stored reserve vehicles, where only a few are in operable condition, with the rest in need of restoration. The more countries share this effort, the more they can achieve with low numbers per country, and the cheaper it will be to refurbish phased-out vehicles.
The 2A4 and 2A5 variants account for more than half of these Leopards. Although they do not represent the latest versions of the tank, and some effort would need to go into reprogramming user interfaces for Ukrainian tank crews, they would be the most logical choice for a Ukrainian brigade because of their wide availability. The European Peace Facility should reimburse countries to replace donated Leopards with the latest version in return. The EU should also support the creation of maintenance and supply lines in EU countries bordering Ukraine to ensure quick repair and replacement.
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Kannatetaan! Suomen satapäinen A4-lautta Ukrainaan, ja tilalle sata A7 varianttia. Pääministeri Marin, onko se Saksan kansleri Scholtzin tekstarinumero vielä siinä liipasimella? Laita viestiä että mukana ollaan!
Tämä on siis vain ideapajan ehdotus, mutta ai että jos tällä mentäisiin.